BUJUMBURA, January 30th (ABP) – The Minister of Finance, Budget and Economic Planning, Nestor Ntahontuye, presented the report analysing the performance and budget execution reports for the second, third and fourth quarters of the 2023/2024 fiscal year to the National Assembly on Wednesday, January 23, 2025.
In his presentation, Minister Ntahontuye emphasized that that report was drawn up in four main points: general observations on the three quarterly reports, the level of revenue realization, the level of expenditure execution and the analysis of programmatic performance.
With regard to those quarterly reports, the Minister indicated that the data provided is not exhaustive compared with that contained in the general budget voted for the 2023/2024 financial year, which does not allow for an in-depth analysis of the state of revenue realization and expenditure execution.
With regard to reporting on the execution of activities by ministry, the analysis focused on the budget execution of activities benefiting from major allocations set at a threshold of 10% of the program’s planned budget.
For 7 of the 15 ministries, the number of programs reported on is lower than that forecast in the annual budget work plan (PTBA). At the Ministry of the Interior, for example, 4 out of 5 programs were reported in the third quarter. Decentralization and local development program “002”, with a quarterly budget of 13,828,274,619 BIF, was not reported, even though it includes a budget-intensive activity of 9,510,159,907 BIF.
Similar situations were observed in other ministries, notably those in charge of the civil service, justice, foreign affairs, agriculture, education and finance. In some cases, major budget-intensive activities, such as salaries, investments and specific projects, were not included in the reports.
The Minister also pointed out that reported revenue realization rates are unreliable due to discrepancies between initial forecasts and those in the 2023/2024 Finance Act. As for expenditure execution, wages and salaries, as well as goods and services, showed moderately satisfactory realization rates, while investments saw a very low execution rate.
During oral questions, the Minister explained that poor revenue performance was due to a number of factors, including account fluctuations, poor forecasting, taxpayer reluctance, the economic climate and the low productivity of certain companies. After analysis, the report was unanimously adopted with a few improvements.